


If You Can't Crawl

by Ragingstillness



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: ALL OF THE HURT/COMFORT, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, not explicitly anti team cap but certainly not happy about them, post civil-war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 02:08:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16609865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ragingstillness/pseuds/Ragingstillness
Summary: Tony and Pepper are at their wits end trying to heal from the wounds Civil War left them when they meet a fascinating young woman who may be the key to their future.





	If You Can't Crawl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unfortunatelyevent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfortunatelyevent/gifts).



It had only been about 40 minutes and Tony was _this close_ to ditching his tie in a garbage can when Pepper wasn’t looking. Not that he would have the chance, considering how tightly she’d been clinging to his arm the whole evening. An outside observer would assume she was being shy or clingy, but in really Pepper wasn’t arm candy, she was an anchor. An anchor holding the SS Tony within the limits of the convention room floor.

The official Forbes 30 under 30 awards ceremony had yet to begin but people were still milling around, having a pre-party of sorts. Then would be the ceremony, then another party, of the dinner variety this time, which Tony was grateful for, then an afterparty.

When Tony had been young enough to be eligible for one of these awards the afterparties had been his favorite. Now he spent the entire week running up to the celebration wondering why they even called it an afterparty when it was just a continuation of the previous party plus a change in location. And sometimes not even that.

Tony mentally scoffed at himself. He was getting old.

At least the initial schmoozing was over. Every year he came to one of these things he’d be swarmed the minute he walked in by reporters, rivals, and people who wanted to suck up to him. He liked the latter the least. But he was scheduled tonight to hand out one of the awards and was thus required to be there all night.

Pepper was dedicated to keeping him there, but he could tell she wasn’t enjoying it any more than he was. Pepper had spent the last month in and out of hospitals, caring for Rhodey and overseeing stealing him from the military to an extent that Stark Industries could provide his physical therapy and the legs braces that would allow him to walk again. Nothing but the best for Tony’s honeybear.

But the braces, even in their most sophisticated form, didn’t negate the phantom pain Rhodey felt and it was intense. No amount of medication or therapy could get rid of it and Tony and Pepper were both strung out with worry. Rhodey had actually pushed them out of Stark Tower for the night, forcing them to attend to their company image rather than him.

It was putting both of them on edge and Pepper was drooping on Tony’s arm. He was much more used to the limited sleep than she was but that didn’t mean his smiles weren’t a little tighter than normal and his stride a little less steady.

Pepper had been half-heartedly nursing a single champagne glass all night, and Tony had only seen her take three sips. But she had checked her phone twelve times. JARVIS was under instructions to notify each of them with multiple alerts if anything happened to Rhodey while they were out.

A reporter sitting at the bar shot Tony and Pepper a wink, raising his glass. Pepper returned the gesture but didn’t drink.

Tony scanned the room. The ceiling of the convention center arched high and curved above their heads, stretching the length of the shallow oval roof. He knew most of the people in attendance, but the room was buzzing tonight due to an influx of newcomers. Often this ceremony honored people from the standard large tech cities: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston. But several people had made the news by making it onto the list from much lesser known locales.

Tony’s gaze swept over the small groups of people until he landed on a particularly large cluster. At last, something interesting. He tugged Pepper forward gently towards the group. They could both use some gossip to wake them up.

Tony slid into the crowd, not parting it, but getting close enough to see its center without being noticed. A large group of well-dressed men and women, financial investors, Tony identified, were all clustered around a shockingly young woman with a blonde ponytail and glasses. She was talking animatedly, waving her hands back and forth and making uncultured faces to go along with whatever story she was narrating.

Tony smiled despite himself. It was nice to see someone not yet embittered by years of experience in the public eye. He inclined his head towards Pepper’s ear. “Who is that?”

Pepper moved into Tony’s spot, her own view blocked by an especially tall African-American man wearing an earpiece. Tony saw Pepper’s eyes widen. “That’s Felicity Smoak. She’s the CEO of Smoak Technologies, previously Palmer Technologies, previously Queen Consolidated.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up. That slip of a woman was a tech giant? He’d heard of Smoak technologies, who hadn’t? It was one of the fastest growing Fortune 500 companies out there, a clean energy producer and pioneer in the medical field. In a way they were Tony’s competition, but their version of clean energy involved improving the amount of energy that could be safely stored in a battery rather than creating completely new forms of energy.

They were also quite infamous. The only reason the company wasn’t growing faster was due to its location. It’s headquarters could be found in Starling City, nicknamed The Most Dangerous City in America.

Shipments of technology leaving Starling had a high rate of attacks and raids. Their crime rate was staggeringly high, and the city itself suffered at least one massive disaster once a year. Massive disasters like earthquakes, explosions, take over by a hostile army, or attack by legions of assassins.

Even SHIELD feared sending agents there or assigning the Avengers to take care of things. A lot of that was connected to Starling’s own local heroes, Team Green Arrow, as they were known.

The group consisted of a green leather clad archer, his two red partners, a man in a spartan helmet who carried a gun, and various black clad women warriors who fought with staffs. For the primitive nature of their weapons, they policed Starling City almost single-handedly, and violently, meeting out vigilante justice.

Their leader, the Green Arrow, was rumored to be Starling City Mayor Oliver Queen, former CEO of Queen Consolidated. And fiancé of Felicity Smoak, the very woman they were staring at now.

Once, on a lark, Tony had tried to find out where in the city the Green Arrow was hiding. He had immediately encountered firewalls the likes of which he’d never seen before. Even with JARVIS’ help, Tony had been unable to get past the vast array of digital traps that protected the city’s own antihero. He hadn’t tried again since, feeling vaguely afraid of whoever had the genius to set up such a powerful resistance to his AI.

Felicity had finished her story and the investors were all laughing, some women clapping politely. Felicity’s eyes swept the crowd, and to Tony’s surprise, seemed to land on him.

She flushed and stepped towards him, parting the crowd of people. Tony was prepared for anything when suddenly Felicity veered off to his right and reached out to shake Pepper’s hand vigorously.

“Oh my god, Miss Potts. It’s amazing to finally meet you. I used to read about you in the magazines I stowed under my bed when I was living in Vegas. I had a huge poster with your best quotes on my wall in college. Oh no, am I babbling? I’m totally babbling and I’m meeting Pepper Potts, I’m so sorry. I’m just so excited.”

Pepper’s eyes lit up at Felicity’s pure enthusiasm and she looked less tired than he had in weeks. Felicity finally noticed Tony was there and held her hand out to him.

“Mr. Stark, the brains behind the scenes. It’s wonderful to finally meet you. You should meet my guy-in-the-workshop Curtis, he should be around here somewhere?”

Felicity craned her neck up and got on her tiptoes in her tiny gold stilettos. After a minute she huffed and settled back on her heels.

“He might have had to take a call from Paul.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “His husband, they’re just gotten back together and it’s all kind of new to them, reconciliation from a big fight.”

Pepper smiled. “It’s lovely to meet you Miss Smoak. I have to say, I’m surprised you feel so honored to meet me because to be quite honest, I’m feeling a little starstruck myself.”

“Over me? Oh, I’m nothing special. Curtis is the one who does all the work.”

“Felicity be kinder to yourself.” The tall African-American man who Pepper had been behind earlier had come up next to Felicity.

Felicity looked back at him and smiled. Ah, he must be her bodyguard. “I’m being modest Diggle. Curtis really does do most of the R&D, I just sit in Oliver’s old office and sign endless stacks of paper.”

Pepper laughed. “Sounds like my job to a T. Except my Curtis can sometimes be found slinking around the halls like a ghoul, in search of coffee.”

Tony bumped her shoulder gently. “At least I don’t hide a pillow in my bottom desk drawer to scream into.”

Pepper’s mouth fell open. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“What else would you be doing with it? Sleeping on your desk? Not my busy CEO.”

Pepper smiled. “Anyway, I’m very happy to meet you Felicity. Is your company up for an award tonight?”

“It is, I’m very excited. Smoak Technologies on the 30 under 30 list. It’s like a dream.”

“How old are you, Felicity?”

“26.”

“Wow, you’re mighty young.” Tony realized how that might have sounded and backtracked. “I mean, it’s impressive you’re so successful.”

“No need to apologize. I didn’t exactly have to claw my way to the top; I’m sure you know the story.”

Tony tried to remember if he’d read anything about Smoak Technologies’ start. Nope, nothing; his brain was blank of anything but worry for Rhodey and pain about Steve. He winced. Don’t think about Steve, not now, not ever.

“It must have slipped my brain. Remind me?”

“I began as Oliver Queen’s executive assistant at Queen Consolidated. When he lost the company to Ray Palmer, I became _his_ executive assistant.” Here Felicity’s face darkened slightly. “When Ray passed away, a document was found bequeathing the company to me in the instance of his death.”

Pepper set a hand on Felicity’s arm. “That’s awful.”

“It was,” Felicity took a deep breath. “But I’ve moved on. What Smoak Tech is today is at least _partly_ thanks to me, and I’m happy enough with that.”

“I imagine you can’t tell us any of the projects you’re working on right now?”

Felicity waved a hand in front of her own face dismissively. “No, actually I have been trying to get the word out about something. It’s a bio stimulant microchip, for spinal implants.”

Both Pepper and Tony sucked in a harsh breath. “What’s your success rate?”

“100%, but we’ve only been able to test it on one person.”

“You’re already at human trials? That’s impressive.”

“It wasn’t an official trial per say. Curtis created the chip to help me and then we handed the patent over to the company.”

“You implanted it in a friend?”

“Oh no. I’m our first and only success story.” Felicity spun on her heels, showing off the back of her gold dress. The slit cut low enough that they could see three distinct circular scars, along with a starburst one at the base of her spine where the chip was likely implanted. Pepper’s and Tony’s mouths had dropped open.

“But you’re, so…so mobile,” Tony eventually came up with.

“Yup, the implant was painful, and PT was hell but now, I’m pretty much as good as new. I want to share this miracle invention with the world, but my board of directors refuses to take a loss from the sale due to the incredible price of the materials required to mass produce them. If I can get enough capital from outside sources we can go public, but for the moment, mass distribution is more of a pipe dream.”

Tony felt the fist that had clenched around his heart since the moment he saw Rhodey begin to fall from the sky so long ago begin loosen its grip. He exchanged a glance with Pepper. They were perfectly in sync.

“How much do you need?”

Felicity blinked. “Well to stock specialty clinics and national hospitals about $400 million. We were thinking we’d distribute to those places first because they’re the ones most familiar with procedures of this type and have the delicate equipment to perform the implant.”

Her face fell a bit.

“The cost to provide it, along with the equipment and training to all other hospitals nationwide has been estimated at an astronomical number.”

“What is it?” Pepper’s voice was even but her arms had tightened into a vice around Tony’s elbow.

Felicity faltered for a moment. “I think it was $20 billion.”

“We’ll fund it.”

“Excuse me?!” Felicity’s eyes almost popped out of her head.

Pepper nodded. “We’ll fund it. SI has been wanting to enter the medical field for a while anyway, and we have the capital to make it happen.”

“Oh-,” Felicity’s breath caught in her throat and she blinked rapidly. “You, you’re serious. You’re actually serious.”

Pepper smiled. “We are. Not that Tony’s input is really necessary. I’m the CEO and he’s just a lowly board member.”

And like that the tension was broken. Felicity’s eyes shone with happy tears for the rest of their conversation, but she managed to keep it together long enough to hold a stunningly intelligent conversation with Tony and Pepper.

After the ceremony, they invited Felicity and her bodyguard to sit at their table. Felicity had been commiserating with Pepper over the strain of being CEO when Tony accidentally mentioned something vaguely technical about JARVIS and was surprised to hear Felicity squeal and jump in with a rush of technological terminology, firing questions left and right.

Tony quickly ran out of the energy to respond at speed and simply passed her his phone, so she could speak with JARVIS. Felicity had been shaking so hard she almost vibrated out of her seat, but she introduced herself with such an awed voice Tony could tell JARVIS was taken with the young woman who treated his code like it was the best thing she’d ever seen.

They parted on happy terms, Tony and Pepper to Happy’s care and Felicity skipping happily off into the darkness with her stoic bodyguard. There was something a little unnerving about how comfortable she was in the late hour and the dark street she turned onto but Tony pushed the sensation away.

They had made plans to set up the joint venture in several weeks, Pepper having to convince the board first. She had her fiercest face on when she’d made the declaration and Tony did not pity the other board members.

They arrived back home to Rhodey sitting up in front of the TV, a heating pad behind his back and an ice pack on his stomach as if he hadn’t decided which one would help more and decided just to try both. He looked up as they approached.

“How was the ceremony? Are we going to have any starry-eyed little inventors skulking around the building in the next couple of days?”

Tony snorted. “Not exactly.” He exchanged a glance with Pepper, eyes shining.

Rhodey pushed up on his arms to wag his finger at Tony. “Woah, woah. That’s your ‘we have news’ faces. What happened?”

Pepper sat down on the couch besides Rhodey while Tony perched on the arm. “Rhodey,” she began. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Has someone been hurt?” Rhodey looked concerned.

“No, no, but this is serious. Rhodey,” she took a breath. “We think we may have found a way to give you back full mobility.”

Rhodey’s eyes widened and for a moment he couldn’t make a sound beyond choked gasps. “You-, what? How?”

Tony grinned, sniffing a little to keep his tears at bay. “We ran into a young CEO named Felicity Smoak at the ceremony. She’s created a bio stimulant, a microchip of sorts, that can repair any spinal damage.”

Cautious hope shone in Rhodey’s eyes. “How can you be sure she’s telling the truth?”

Pepper’s hand slid down Rhodey’s arm to his hand. “She has it implanted in her own spine. She was in a car accident and then shot through the back with a high caliber machine gun three times.”

Tony continued, laying a hand on Rhodey’s other shoulder. “You should have seen her darling. She was,” he sniffed. “Buddy she was practically dancing on air. Spinning around in tiny little stilettos, like she didn’t have giant holes in her spine barely a couple months ago.”

Rhodey stared into space for a moment then dropped his face into his hands and began to sob. Tony slid onto the couch, half in Rhodey’s lap and flung his arms around his best friend, crossing over Pepper’s own earnest embrace. They cried together, for what must have been the hundredth time in that week, but for the first time it felt like the crying had actually done something. Something good.  

**Author's Note:**

> This is legit just fluff. Like, seriously, I needed to have these characters meet and then my mind went to pure happiness. RIP Stan Lee.
> 
> P.S. anyone who can finish the quote the title is from gets all my love.


End file.
